


Weasels and Martens

by Leonawriter



Category: Cabin Pressure, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4292064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin gets his red hair and freckles from the Weasley in him. Unfortunately, that also means he’s been through the wars a bit, and not just in the metaphorical sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weasels and Martens

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: As a warning, the timeline is all over the place here. I blocked seriously hard upon trying to sort it out into one straight line, and gave up eventually. Though that said, all the snarls are really just on the HP side of things. I might do further parts to this - I had plans.

He went to the interview desperate to have a chance at flying in a place that was a bit out of the way, not too noticeable, not too prominent. He'd have to find somewhere to stay if he got the job, but that he could figure out later - if nothing else worked, he could live out of his van for a while, before people started to get suspicious.

The suit he wore, after years of robes and then years of pretending to not know what robes were, sat oddly on his form, like a fancy dress costume he'd have to put back on the shelf after use until the next special occasion. In truth, he'd transfigured it from an old set of pyjamas, and it'd go back to that once he was done, as if it'd never existed, because if things worked out he'd never need it again, and if things didn't then no one would know.

He found himself thankful that real life wasn't as much like the Dresden Files as Caitlin often snidely suggested whenever they met up and the subject of their dad's old van came up. It might be old and in constant need of repair, but at least it had nothing to do with Martin's  _magic_.

He hadn't been able to help jumping just a little when the formidable woman who was interviewing him called for someone called Arthur - he immediately turned around, half expecting someone with red hair and freckles like his own to come bounding up the hall and through the door, having not quite known how to figure out the coffee machine, or even the kettle.

He'd blinked a little at the sight of the Arthur who'd come in, the coffee that wasn't all that bad actually, and called himself a fool.

"Expecting someone else?" Carolyn had asked, an eyebrow raised.

Martin had shrugged nervously, trying to pretend it was nothing.

"Oh - no. I've got a cousin called Arthur, though, and he was always sort of interested whenever I spoke about planes, so. Funny coincidence. Silly, though - he lives in Devon. And this isn't anywhere near Devon."

"No," the woman had said. "No, it is not. Although I can hardly say that my son is  _just_   'sort of interested'," she added as an afterthought, muttered not quite under her breath.

...

The attic was quite something to get used to.

It'd been almost suspiciously easy to get it, although after the results of his interview and the fact that he  _wouldn't be paid_ , he'd quickly realised that he'd need the van for more than just a home, and setting up a small (magical) tent inside wouldn't quite do the job if other people (muggles) were going to be potentially messing around in there sometimes. He just couldn't afford the risk.

He couldn't say he wasn't used to small spaces. He was. He'd lived in and from places the same size and, on a technicality, smaller - but that had been before. It'd been what felt like another lifetime ago. Before he was a pilot, a proper one. 

Sometimes he'd wake up and it'd be dark and there would be loud noises coming from downstairs, and sometimes he'd feel reassured, because there were other people and the friendly sound of their voices reminded him of home and school and the Burrow, the few times he'd ever been. Sometimes he'd wake up and turn on the light and it'd be all he could do to ground himself, remind himself that this wasn't nearly twenty years ago, there wasn't anything wrong, that no one was murdering the agricultural students downstairs simply because they didn't have magic, simply because Martin was  _there_.

He put up magical posters of his favourite Quidditch teams, and muggle posters of his favourite aeroplanes, and hung a model of a Lockheed Martin from the ceiling of the attic that sometimes went on flights around the room when he was bored.

Everything was charmed to look normal if the students or landlord came in. Nothing would look any different to Martin himself, but no one else would suspect a thing.

That, he'd long since decided, was how it was safest.

...

The first time the ground proximity warnings came to life while they were in the air, Martin panicked.

Douglas laughed over it, of course. And wouldn't stop teasing him about it for weeks later.

Martin tried not to let it affect him, and pretended that it was simply because he wasn't used to such an old aircraft as G-ERTI, and was privately relieved that there was something else to pin the blame on. Even if it did mean the incessant teasing. At least then they might forget about how, just before the warnings had started, Martin had been suggesting they fly just a little higher.

It was easier to hope that the plane wasn't reliable than that his magic was unpredictable and might get him into trouble with the Ministry for outing himself and the wizarding community in general if he wasn't careful, and far more preferable than potentially getting taken to court and his co-workers having had their memories wiped.

It could happen. He knew it could. It was part of why his dad had been so worried about the idea of him going off to flight school when he could so easily have chosen a respectable wizarding career that he'd be good at, that would pay, something that the rest of the Crieffs could only dream of.

It was why he'd only been left the van, he knew. They tried to tell him there were other reasons, but Martin knew better. It was a constant reminder of how he could do better.

Sometimes, he wished he could take the thing to the junk heap and throw it out for good. When he was sick of Icarus Removals and thought  _I could do it, I could find some magical job that wouldn't mind the odd hours and I could apparate or floo in_ , the temptation was high.

But then he'd remember his dad, and he'd remember the man teaching him all about how cars and vans like this one worked when he was on his summer holidays, and how this was how he'd learned about electronics, something not even the brightest of the other Ravenclaw students had been taught, because it wasn't even on the advanced Muggle Studies course. You had to learn that kind of thing from muggles themselves, and you learned it best when they knew you had a different perspective on things.

Then Martin would remember all of the minor spells he'd used over the years to keep the van running, and shrug, remembering how several years ago his cousin Arthur had enchanted a Ford Anglia into flying, and when it'd been abandoned, it'd been discovered to have its own personality.

Best not to risk muggles tampering and falling afoul. 

As it turned out, every time he had those kinds of thoughts, he'd remember later that night as he re-he read an old, battered copy of  _A History of Magic_ and remembered what it was like to read it aloud in those rare moments when there'd just been the two of them - or sometimes, on the oddest of occasions, three or four when Simon and Caitlin would stop by for a few minutes, expressions strange but not, he would later realise, too different from wistfulness - and he'd remember the times before the day he'd had a phone call from mum, her voice shaking as she explained in short words that he had to hide, if he wasn't doing so already, had to be safe.

His mum had been out visiting friends. Simon and Caitlin had already moved out. Dad was the only one at home, when the Death Eaters had found him. 

An open and closed case, according to the police, who weren't even aware there was a war going on around them. None of their business, and far too dangerous to get involved in, according to the Aurors.

The old van was all he had left of the man. Maybe, one day, if he didn't need it any more, he'd give it to Arthur. One of the Arthurs. 

...


End file.
